PM566: Data Analysis for Covid 19 Vaccine Hesitancy and possible demographic and geographic correlations

Description

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Introduction

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy refers to the reluctance or refusal to get vaccinated despite the availability of vaccines. Vaccination plays a crucial role in controlling the pandemic by reducing the spread of the virus, preventing severe illness, and decreasing hospitalization and death rates. However, hesitancy has been influenced by factors such as misinformation, distrust in healthcare systems or government authorities, concerns about the speed of vaccine development, and fears about potential side effects. Social, cultural, and political contexts have also shaped people’s attitudes toward vaccines.

This data set has various demographic information showing information by county, state, ethnicity, COVID-19 vaccine coverage (CVAC) and social vulnerability index (SVI). In order to determine hesitancy levels, people were surveyed “Once a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 is available to you, would you…get a vaccine?” and the following options were: 1) “definitely get a vaccine”; 2) “probably get a vaccine”; 3) “unsure”; 4) “probably not get a vaccine”; 5) “definitely not get a vaccine”. his data set also looks into varying levels of hesitancy: hesitant, hesitant or unsure, or strongly hesitant. People who responded “probably not” or “definitely not” were categorized as hesitant.

Data set origin: https://data.cdc.gov/Vaccinations/Vaccine-Hesitancy-for-COVID-19-County-and-local-es/q9mh-h2tw/about_data

Research Questions

Are there any correlations between state and region and the rates of vaccine hesitancy? Are there any correlations between the social vulnerability index and rates of vaccine hesitancy? Are there any correlations between COVID-19 vaccine coverage and rates of vaccine hesitancy? Are there any correlations between ethnicity and rates of vaccine hesitancy?

Analysis

Visualization Results

Figure 1: Average Hesitancy Rates by State Montana has the highest rates of hesitancy at 25.14%. It is followed by Wyoming (21.78%) and Arkansas (21.77%) who have similar rates of hesitancy. Vermont has the lowest rates of hesitancy (4.03%). Based on this visualization and the difference from maximum to minimum of estimate rates I would conclude that hesitancy rates and states are correlated. The color coded grouping of region also allows to see if there is a possible correlation between region and vaccine hesitancy. Based on the figure the South appears to be more hesitant and the Northeast on average is less hesitant.

Figure 2: Average Hesitancy Rates and Non Hesitancy Rates by State Montana has the highest rates of hesitancy (25.14%) and the lowest rates of non hesitancy (27.74%). It is followed by Wyoming (21.78%) and Arkansas (21.77%) who have similar rates of hesitancy. However, Arkansas (36.05%) has higher rates of non hesitancy than Wyoming (33.96%). Vermont (4.03%) has the lowest rates of hesitancy and Massachusetts (4.63%) has the second lowest rates of hesitancy. However Massachusetts (85.13%) has the highest rates of non hesitancy. Based on this visualization I would conclude that hesitancy and non hesitancy appear to be inversely related and the higher the rate of hesitancy, the lower the rate of non hesitancy. I would also conclude that the variance of mean hesitancy rates and non hesitancy rates differ by states indication a correlation between state and hesitancy rates. By region, the south appears to be clustered together with higher hesitancy rates and lower not hesitant rates. The Northeast appears to be clustered with low rates of hesitancy and high rates on non hesitancy.

Figure 3: Average Hesitancy Rates by Social Vulnerability Index Very high vulnerability has the highest median estimated hesitancy (16.76%). Very low vulnerability has the lowest median rates of hesitancy (10.55%). This is interesting because you would think that the higher vulnerability would not be quite so hesitant.

Figure 4: Average Hesitancy Rates by CVAC Very high concern has the highest median estimated hesitancy (16.80%). Low concern has the lowest median rates of hesitancy (10.18%). This makes sense that areas where there is very high concern of vaccine rollout challenges could be high levels of hesitancy. For example, misinformation could be the cause of high levels of hesitancy and cause challenges to vaccine rollouts.

Figure 5: Average Hesitancy Rates by Ethnicity This graph displays the relationship between the percentage of an ethnicity in a population and the estimated hesitancy levels. Some groups like non-Hispanic Asians appear to have lower overall hesitancy, while groups such as non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native show a wider spread and higher average hesitancy.